and only becomes active on key press in its command window.

To me this stinks of something trying to read from STDIN or the raw tty. To have it running in a command window implies to me you are starting it via that same window. Lets assume you start it by typing Daemonwebserver and pressing enter. Try instead saying Daemonwebserver<NUL if you are on windows or Daemonwebserver</dev/null on unix, (being current apples are unixish i suspect that would work there too). (edit i dont know how i missed this perl.exe ez_brochure_web daemon -i 0) Try starting it by saying perl.exe ez_brochure_web daemon -i 0<NUL. If the problem then goes away look thru your code of ez_brochure_web for where it might try to read from <STDIN> or maybe just <>. If it doesnt go away i suspect something is trying to read from the raw device, bypassing STDIN. that could be harder to find, but at least you have a clue what to look for.